Week 7 – Lectorial

What is a text, and what is textual analysis in Media studies?

Texts are vehicles for the production of cultural meaning. Texts in the media world include images, documents, social practices and institutions. A text can be anything that is studied. Even a haircut is a text, according to G.Branston & R.Stafford, ‘Approaching Media Texts’ (Ch.1) in The Media Student’s Book. London: Routledge, 2010.

Texts don’t always give off one definitive meaning. Texts can be interpreted differently by different groups of people and social groups.

I think that all media texts can be deconstructed and analysed by anyone whom the text in question speaks to.

As an audience, we make sense of texts by relating them back to us and acknowledging how they affect us and the social climate that we live in. I can agree with this. Especially in this media age, we are constantly taking in all of the information that we view on the internet and interpret it to our own lives. We save what we value and we skim past what we don’t. With the media being so omnipresent in our lives, texts are all we’ve got.